Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Archive for June 3rd, 2008

It is
perhaps symbolic of this Government that while crime in the country is
reaching civil war proportions at around 40 homicides per day, the
Government is more concerned at trying to turn Venezuelans into informers
and collaborators in order to protect the country’s “sovereignty” and
“integrity”. Who cares if crime is a problem if they have their own war to
fight?

Which at the end of the day are empty words from a Government
that lets Cuban intelligence officers run the country’s intelligence
services and turn over identification technologies to a foreign Government
(Cuba). Or that buys debt from foreign country’s, gives aid to others while
Venezuela’s health care system is falling apart together with its
citizens.

Because in the end these guys like Chavez or Minister of
the Interior and Justice Chacin, seem to be like boy soldiers, playing at
spy games, war games and whatever other neurotic fantasy drove them to the
military 30 years ago and to the feverish and useless adventure they have
embarked our poor country on.

So, Venezuelans are now supposed to
become “support” elements in this war to protect our secrets and defend our
sovereignty from the war that the US Government secretly and silently
declared on these clowns that pretend to run our country. If you don’t
participate in “supporting”, you can go to jail for two to four
years.

I can already hear the idiotic supporters of the revolution
suggesting that Venezuelans are not patriotic and we are making much ado
about nothing, but that explanation is wearing out. How the these people
claim to be “leftwing” but have a total disregard for human rights and the
abuse of laws by Governments is a mystery that I hope to have some PSF
explain to me some day.Unfortunately, the clowns are using our own
money to control and destroy the country. No matter how ineffective and
inefficient they may be, they somehow manage to screw us at every step.
Last weekend we saw an electoral process paid and financed by the
Venezuelan people so that PSUV could go through its democratic farce, while
the Head of the CNE Tibisay Lucena, a pubic servant also paid by us, gave
us periodic reports as to how well that political party’s primary was
going. Of course, we are still waiting for the third report from December’s
referendum, but Ms. Lucena seems to have more important things to do.

Of course, Chavez says that anyone criticizing the new law
intelligence law is a de facto Bush supporter, the same way he views that
anyone not in favor of his favorite baseball team is his enemy. It is as
simplistic as that at the end of the day.

But while most worry
about the fact that we have all become “supporting” elements of the
Government’s intelligence service, it seems more significant to be
concerned about the fact that prosecutors and judges have to cooperate with
intelligence services. Isn’t that sweet? You want to get rid of a judge
because he is inconvenient to the Government? Simple, ask him to
cooperate!

Of course, in the end, the “intelligence” services will
just have their name changed, like 98% of the country’s institutions in the
last ten years, some of which have had their name changed even three times,
to no avail. The law will only be used and abused inefficiently in
selective cases that are of interest to the Government, like the Land Bill,
and will in the end simply become another stumbling block to getting
anything done in Venezuela.